Manchester Airport has rejected claims its new body scanners will fall foul of child pornography laws, claiming that because they use X-rays "they do not make an image".
The machines use low doses of radiation to deliver a 3D black and white scan of volunteer passengers' bodies to a human operator sat in front of a screen. The …

Re Anonymous Coward 14th Oct 14:32 GMT

Now come on mate thats just not fair. You are using logic, and facts and science to prove your point. Not scare mongering and half trurths some bloke told you down the pub.

I for one dont see what the fuss is about. You get padded down or you go in the booth. Both are intrusive. If you dont like it dont fly. I would prefer to go in the booth. For me thats a lot less intrusive and its hardly a quality image, whats the big deal ???

claim accidental imaging

if something that is illegal to take an image of walks into shot, have you broken the law?

if not you can say, "you must get the other side of this wall to board the plain, if you go this way you will be patted down and you must not clime the wall" and have the scanner in the wall, if they just happen to pop into shot, its not your fault.

Turn it up

No-one would object to someone being able to see their skeleton - it's just the fleshy bits on the outside that we get coy about - so turn up the intensity on the X-Ray gizmo and make the people being scanned look like a set of anonymous dancing bones. Presumably guns/bombs/drugs/bottles of water will still stand out, but no-one will get a squint at your intimates.

In fact, this would make the scanner even more like that scene from Total Recall when Arnie runs through the security scanner and we see his bones, but catch no sight of the future Governor of California's frank-n-beans.

common sense says leave the kids so they can blow us up ..?!

@Stu J

>I managed to inadvertently take my corkscrew/knife out of Manchester in my hand luggage. They found it at Tenerife airport on the return flight......

As it was in your hand luggage even with the new scanner you would still have boarded the plane with it and if the last paragraph of my comment turns out to be true then you would be more likely to get something on board in your hand luggage.

If you'd had the corkscrew on your person then the normal arch type metal detector would have sensed it.

You haven't seen anything yet

The obsessions of the child-saver lobby are going to get a lot more militant in coming months. The last Tory government knocked the Satanic Ritual Abuse thing on the head, when gender feminists and religious fundamentalists were running around trying to convince the country that it was full of satanist paedophiles. Virginia Bottomley MP killed off that obsession dead in the water, though for a few years you could find plenty of social workers indoctrinated by The Reachout Trust who were convinced the Devil himself walked in Nottinghamshire or Rochdale.

New Labour though was "game" for anything the loonies said, and so now we have the ISA in all its glory, and effectively Labour have branded 1/4 of the population paedophiles (unless the ISA says they aren't - or rather haven't been caught yet.) The loonies won but they know they are running out of time - the next government might not be so favourable to them.

How exactly an X-ray image counts as an indecent image is beyond me - my X-ray of my stuffed knee showed bone. It was the MRI that showed the proper detail. Now if it was an MRI scanner at the airport I'd be a tad concerned; but a skeleton and perhaps the metal parts of your kids' DS Lite? Hum. If it works as planned all the operator should see is the same as the scanner scene in 'Total Recall.' Skin and muscle just show as fuzzy grey.

A bigger concern has to be the rads applied. How often will these scanner devices be calibrated, and who will check it is done correctly? Or do we have to wait until there's a national scandal when we find millions of citizens and their children were zapped with scanners outputting 2 x, 3 x plus more energy than required?

Don't like it?

@AC 14/10 13:33 - "Yes,But"

You are incorrect - this document,if you had read it, refers to sentencing guidelines. It clearly states that the definition of obscene is up to the jury & that photos DO NOT have to be "erotically posed" - it cites a case(O'Carroll) where someone was convicted of importing indecent 'naturist' photos, which were NOT erotically posed.

Quote "Accordingly non-posed photographs that are indecent can form counts on an indictment."